There are several options out there if you wan to run Mac OS X on your non-Apple labelled computer, but one of them appears to be in serious trouble. It has been uncovered that the EFI-X module is nothing more than a USB stick with a DRM chip, with code from the hackintosh community on it - without attribution. On top of that, its firmware update utility uses LGPL code - again, without attribution.

That is NOT a restriction imposed by the GPL ... that is merely a condition on the permissions given to you by the GPl (which conditionally over-rides the copyright law restrictions).

Once again, you are nitpicking on semantics - restriction, "conditional permission" - same difference.

And by the way, the GPL is the absolutely worst license one can pick when arguing against the equivalence, or even outright equality, of source code and software licenses (or fairness thereof). Because the GPL, unlike software licenses (baring some legally contested clauses, present in some past licenses), the GPL takes away from the offeree (the one who accepts the license terms) ownership. The particular clause we both mentioned says that changes I have made, and the copyright to which the law exclusively grants me, have to be released under the same license regardless of my wishes. That is in effect taking my exclusive ownership away from me.

Before people get their tighty-whities in a bunch, I want to stress I'm not arguing against the GPL. I'm not particularly a fan of it, because I think that the ideological part of it often spills into the software written under it, making it more ideologically driven than technologically driven, a good example of which, in my opinion, is GCC. However, I do understand that for many people the ideology behind it is important and as result I fully support its existence, its use in open source projects, and its legal defense. I'm merely trying to illustrate that this distinction - FOSS code licenses good, SLAs, and Apple's in particular, bad - is very much arbitrary and a matter of point of view.

... the GPL, unlike software licenses (baring some legally contested clauses, present in some past licenses), the GPL takes away from the offeree (the one who accepts the license terms) ownership. The particular clause we both mentioned says that changes I have made, and the copyright to which the law exclusively grants me, have to be released under the same license regardless of my wishes. That is in effect taking my exclusive ownership away from me.

That's not entirely true - I believe that you're perfectly free to release your changes, as *just* your changes (eg, patches) under whatever license you wish. It is only when you give out the intrinsically-linked combination (either binary or source) of your changes and the original code, that the GPL is forced onto your code.

The same thing applies to books - you could write something describing how a book's plot should have been, in your opinion, and do whatever you want with it. If you actually edit that book and change it to be the way you think it should have been, however, you can't publish it without the permission of the copyright holder (within the copyright period, and subject to a few other conditions)

the GPL is the absolutely worst license one can pick when arguing against the equivalence, or even outright equality, of source code and software licenses (or fairness thereof). -- That is in effect taking my exclusive ownership away from me.

The GPL doesn't exist to make you or me any more special than the rest are. It's about community.

And how can GPL take away your "exclusive ownership" to someone else's code? AFAIK the GPL doesn't forbid the real owner of the code to release software based on the same code under another, 'more restrictive', license. Meaning that you could just pay him to get a permission to release your version of the code using some other license.

"That is NOT a restriction imposed by the GPL ... that is merely a condition on the permissions given to you by the GPl (which conditionally over-rides the copyright law restrictions).

Once again, you are nitpicking on semantics - restriction, "conditional permission" - same difference. "

No, it is not. Not a bit.

The GPL says this: "I, the author of this code, give you the recipient unconditional permissions to run, study, copy and modify the code for your own use. I also give you permission to redistribute this code and any changes you make to it as long as you redistribute it with the same permissions as I give to you now".

And by the way, the GPL is the absolutely worst license one can pick when arguing against the equivalence, or even outright equality, of source code and software licenses (or fairness thereof). Because the GPL, unlike software licenses (baring some legally contested clauses, present in some past licenses), the GPL takes away from the offeree (the one who accepts the license terms) ownership.

Almost all software licenses do that. It isn't your code, you don't own it just because you are in possession of a copy of it.

The particular clause we both mentioned says that changes I have made, and the copyright to which the law exclusively grants me, have to be released under the same license regardless of my wishes.

Well, not exactly. The GPL license says you are given the nominated permissions for the licensed code if you stick to one condition. If you need to go outside those conditions, the GPL license does not apply. In that case you are required (by copyright law) to get permission from the author of the code to do what you want to do, which would normally involve buying a commercial license for the code from the author. This is exactly the same as what is required of other code, BTW. That is copyright law.

That is in effect taking my exclusive ownership away from me.

Sorry, but no. Again, copyright law is very clear on this. If you modify an existing work, then the result (which includes the original work plus your changes) is called a "derivative work". Under copyright law, only a certain amount of the derivative work is yours, not the whole lot. You are not the exclusive owner of anything. Once again, under copyright law, you must come to an agreement with the original author before you can get permission to distribute your derivative work.

This applies just the same to closed source as it does to GPL code, BTW.

Before people get their tighty-whities in a bunch, I want to stress I'm not arguing against the GPL. I'm not particularly a fan of it, because I think that the ideological part of it often spills into the software written under it, making it more ideologically driven than technologically driven, a good example of which, in my opinion, is GCC. However, I do understand that for many people the ideology behind it is important and as result I fully support its existence, its use in open source projects, and its legal defense. I'm merely trying to illustrate that this distinction - FOSS code licenses good, SLAs, and Apple's in particular, bad - is very much arbitrary and a matter of point of view.

There are no freedoms which proprietary code gives you which FOSS codes denies you.

Apart from the permission to run one copy of the code on one machine, there are normally no other rights given to you for proprietary code which are given to you with FOSS code.

It is perfectly black and white. FOSS licenses are unequivocably far better for you than any proprietary EULA.